Eat, Drink & Be Merry: Cajun Seafood

Born and raised Creole, La., Leland Rutherford has been bringing the food he grew up on to Mt. Juliet for a few years now.

Cajun Seafood recently opened a new restaurant in Cool View Plaza across from the Hickory Hills subdivision, but it has been several years in the making.

Rutherford used to work on the oil platforms, seven days on, and seven days off, and his down time he would take out his shrimp boat.

When he moved to Tennessee, he would travel back down to Louisiana and bring the shrimp back with him. After his friends would eat the food he cooked up from his trips, they would start asking him to bring them back shrimp. So he went to school in Georgia to get a retail-wholesale license, and started selling out of a building on his land on Bass Lane.

That led to a food trailer that he purchased to take to the Wilson County Fair. Because of the popularity of the fair, Rutherford decided to park the trailer across from West Elementary School.

And it kept snowballing from there, until his daughter and son-in-law decided they wanted to get in the restaurant business, and that led to the new restaurant open at 14833 Lebanon Road.

“Maybe one day we will franchise,” said Rutherford. He said he has talked with a few people about that possibility and considered it.

Rutherford is cooking up all your cajun favorites like gumbo, jambalaya, alligator meat, crab, oysters, red beans and sausage, cajun spaghetti and shrimp etouffe. They even have crawfish when they are in season.

Cajun Seafood is opened Monday and Tuesday and Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. They are closed Sunday and Wednesday.

You can check them out on Facebook under Cajun Seafood LLC, or reach them by phone at (615)288-3264.